Search found 18 matches

by TarTar
Sun Apr 17, 2022 1:09 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: College opinions: Cornell vs Swarthmore - update Final choice Rice
Replies: 312
Views: 30478

Re: College opinions: Cornell vs Swarthmore for Engineering

Definitely Cornell. Very broad program in all types of Engineering. Great access to fantastic liberal arts, economics, bio-sciences, etc. programs, Ag school, Hotel School (great dinning for everyone) and more. The electives offered by [i]all[/i] of the others schools can be used fulfill the non-engineering course requirements. Ithaca is beautiful in Spring and Fall. Wonderful experience (been there - done that). Go again in a heartbeat.
by TarTar
Mon Jan 21, 2019 3:48 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: John Bogle has died at age 89
Replies: 856
Views: 82080

Re: John Bogle has died at age 89

John Bogle affected in a very positive way the lives of so many friends and countless people he did not know and who did not know him, their children and their children’s children. In a book by well known psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom " Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death " (2008). He discusses an idea he calls rippling. People leave traces of themselves in the people they have touched during their lives, and these ripples will affect others long after they are gone. Their presence changed the lives of people they knew and future generations in positive ways even though they may not know it. “Rippling refers to the fact that each of us creates-often often without our conscious intent or knowledge-concentric circles of...
by TarTar
Mon Jan 23, 2017 4:54 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: A personal finance Income Planning Tool (IPT)
Replies: 11
Views: 3635

Re: A personal finance Income Planning Tool (IPT)

There is a new version of the IPT spreadsheet V.0.27.03-01-18-2017a . It is available on the same GitHub web page as listed in the initial post. It contains the updated tax-tables for 2017. An new optional 529 education accounts worksheet 529Data was added and other worksheets modified to take the 529 data into account if it is specified in the Setup worksheet. The Results worksheet now includes summary graphs and tables of the 529 accounts data. Each child's account can have a different stock:bond asset allocation so they can be adjusted for different risk levels. An additional expenses calculator subsection was added in Appendix B.5.2 to let you estimate yearly scheduled expenses both while working, and if desired, while retired. You need...
by TarTar
Wed Oct 05, 2016 1:02 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: A personal finance Income Planning Tool (IPT)
Replies: 11
Views: 3635

Re: A personal finance Income Planning Tool (IPT)

sandramjet wrote:Maybe I missed it, but is there a place to model Roth conversions?
No. It does not handle Roth conversions.
by TarTar
Sun Oct 02, 2016 2:36 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: A personal finance Income Planning Tool (IPT)
Replies: 11
Views: 3635

Re: A personal finance Income Planning Tool (IPT)

I just put a revised version of the IPT on GitHub. This adds optional alternate COLAs for each entry in the irregular expenses data entry table. The default is the expenses inflation COLA (that defaults to the CPI). However, there may be a few cases where an alternate COLA might be useful, such as for future college expenses which currently are higher than the CPI. Revision notes for V.0.25.02-10-02-2016a. Added optional alternate COLAs for S1 and S2 in the 10. ExpensesData 10.2.1 irregular expenses data entry table. This lets you specify COLAs for expenses that you expect to have a much higher or lower COLAs than the default expense COLA specified in 10.1.2. If the alternate COLA value specified is 0%, it defaults to the default expenses C...
by TarTar
Fri Sep 23, 2016 8:49 am
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: A personal finance Income Planning Tool (IPT)
Replies: 11
Views: 3635

Re: A personal finance Income Planning Tool (IPT)

I just put a revised version of the IPT on GitHub based on some of the feedback. Revision notes for V.0.24.18-09-22-2016c. Changes were made based on some initial feedback from Bogleheads. The FAQ was edited and added entry 16. "Why are there separate COLAs for various income sources Work, Pension, Social Security and Annuities worksheets?". Added optional COLA overrides for the Work and Annuity data. Otherwise it uses the CPI. The TODO-List was updated for clarity. The ease of navigation to the Results worksheet was improved from all data entry worksheets. A dynamic summary net worth glide-path results graph was added to each editable data entry worksheet so users may immediately see the results of any changes they make to the da...
by TarTar
Mon Sep 19, 2016 4:55 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: A personal finance Income Planning Tool (IPT)
Replies: 11
Views: 3635

Re: A personal finance Income Planning Tool (IPT)

Thanks for your useful comments. Wow, you've done quite a lot of work developing this spreadsheet. Kudos for excellent documentation and providing reference sources. GitHub is an excellent choice to maintain version control. I am using GitHub in case others want to work on the spreadsheet because it allows branching of derivative versions. For the record, I'm using MS Excel 2016. I also use LibreOffice Calc in Linux. From a compatibility perspective, not using macros is a good thing. It was developed using Excel 2007 and Excel 2010. I tested it with OpenOffice, LibreOffice and Google Sheets. There were some issues with Apple Calc. It runs on some of the Android spreadsheet apps, but is too awkward entering data to use it for more than a few...
by TarTar
Sun Sep 18, 2016 11:54 am
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: A personal finance Income Planning Tool (IPT)
Replies: 11
Views: 3635

Re: A personal finance Income Planning Tool (IPT)

pilot_error wrote:Well I'm intrigued, I will have to spend some time entering my data as this is very comprehensive. I have a personal tool I created but it only applies to me while you did a lot of work to make this applicable to as many users as possible. Can't wait to compare results!
Great.The original version done a while back was heavily personalized. I then decided to generalize it so others could use it. I'd be interested in suggestions for corrections or improvements.

TarTar
by TarTar
Fri Sep 16, 2016 5:24 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: A personal finance Income Planning Tool (IPT)
Replies: 11
Views: 3635

A personal finance Income Planning Tool (IPT)

I wrote a personal finance Excel spreadsheet I believe may be of interest to the Bogleheads. A README file is available on GitHub with links to download the latest version and more documentation at https://github.com/finplanIPT/IPT/blob/master/README.md . It is Beta-level software. The Income Planning Tool or IPT is an Excel spreadsheet that calculates a personal finance glide-path of cash-flows from yearly income streams while subtracting expenses and taxes. This spreadsheet, comprised of a collection of worksheets, estimates yearly income from various sources: work, Social Security, pensions, annuities, and insurance; contributions and withdrawals from deductable retirement accounts (IRA, 401(k), 403(b), etc.), Roth IRAs, and savings inve...
by TarTar
Mon May 25, 2015 2:45 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Home Remodel: Lowe's or Other Local Contractors?
Replies: 19
Views: 13658

Re: Home Remodel: Lowe's or Other Local Contractors?

We did a kitchen and 2 1/2 baths remodel with Lowe's (Montgomery County, MD). We worked with a good planner team at Lowe's to select cabinets, tile, tub, etc.The prime subcontractor for Lowe's was 3d-residential.com. They did a good job - especially the tile work, cleaned up each time they were here, and bent over backwards to fix any issues and accommodated a few changes we had after they started. The only delays we had were when some of the specialty items ordered by Lowe's were delayed. We would definitely recommend both Lowes and 3D-Residential.
by TarTar
Sat Apr 11, 2015 7:52 am
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI
Replies: 7650
Views: 1723622

Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Having previously read many of the wonderful books by Neurologist Oliver Sacks, here are some others I am working my way though the following: [u]Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts[/u] by Stanislas Dehaene (Dec 30, 2014) [u]The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present[/u] by Eric Kandel (Mar 27, 2012) [u]Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are[/u] by Sebastian Seung (Feb 5, 2013) [u]The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload[/u] by Daniel J. Levitin (Aug 19, 2014) [u]This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession[/u] by Daniel J. Levitin (Aug 28, 2007) [u]A Mind for Number...
by TarTar
Tue Sep 23, 2014 4:19 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI
Replies: 7650
Views: 1723622

Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

"Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them" by Joshua Greene (Oct 31, 2013)

and

"The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs" by Greil Marcus (Sep 2, 2014)
by TarTar
Wed May 21, 2014 10:25 am
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V
Replies: 3372
Views: 1564963

Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

"Bak's Sand Pile: Strategies for a Catastrophic World" by Ted G. Lewis (Feb 28, 2011) From part of the Amazon description"... Ted Lewis explains the pattern of catastrophes and their underlying cause. In a provocative tour of a volatile world, he guides the reader through mega-fires, fragile power grids, mismanaged telecommunication systems, global terrorist movements, migrating viruses, volatile markets and Internet storms. Modern societies want to avert catastrophes, but the drive to make things faster, cheaper, and more efficient leads to self-organized criticality-the condition of systems on the verge of disaster. This is a double-edged sword. Everything from biological evolution to political revolution is driven by some ...
by TarTar
Sat Apr 05, 2014 3:54 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V
Replies: 3372
Views: 1564963

Re: advice for 83-year-old in-law with Alzheimer's

Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty and Arthur Goldhammer
by TarTar
Tue Feb 18, 2014 7:50 am
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V
Replies: 3372
Views: 1564963

Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part V

The following is a collection of books on the future of work as the nature of work changes due to the rapidly growing use of digital technology and globalization. For those interested, there are some TED talks on these topics by the authors (search TED). * The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (Jan 20, 2014) * Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (Jan 23, 2012) * Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen (Sep 12, 2013) * The Great Stagnation: How...
by TarTar
Wed Nov 24, 2010 7:16 am
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: How did you first decide to sign up with Vanguard?
Replies: 91
Views: 11997

Friend showed me Frank Armstrong's original on-line book Investing for the 21st Century. Started reading many of the books mention: Malkiel, Bogle, etc.
by TarTar
Wed May 26, 2010 9:05 am
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Can an industry thrive with no copyright protection???
Replies: 1
Views: 730

Can industries thrive without copyright protection

Yes.

It creates new opportunities where some will be monetized.

See "Free: The Future of a Radical Price" by Chris Anderson,
See "Googled: The End of the World As We Know It" by Ken Auletta,

and much more in the software world (Red Hat Linux, SourceForge, MySQL)

Free can mean other new opportunties including a a non-free bottom line.
by TarTar
Sat Jun 06, 2009 4:52 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Computer Languages we have known (and maybe loved)
Replies: 122
Views: 19950

and Fortan-II, SAIL and MAINSAIL

Programmed in Fortran, SAIL, C, and Java primarily. And of course the many many languages in Jeane Sammet's tower of Babel computer languages book. Some of the interesting ones include Fortran-II -- wonderful the way you could slip assembly language in with an S in column 1 to do I/O and bit tweeking (on a PDP8). SAIL -- (Stanford AI Language) the super-Algol with many features currently found in Java (string concatenation), garbage collection, dynamic arrays, bounds checking on a PDP-6 and PDP-10. Plus a lot of stuff no longer found such as the associative memory etc. MAINSAIL -- by Clark Wilcox was a machine independent SAIL subset that ran on a variety of machines. R language -- open-source statistical programming, data analysis and grap...